


To A Stranger

by crumbsfiction



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumbsfiction/pseuds/crumbsfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They meet in college, at weddings and in hospitals and battlefields and parking lots and she’s always there to greet him with a warm smile and, “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”</p>
<p>(In which, they are constants)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To A Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> chinese translation by rosa [here!](http://tieba.baidu.com/p/2843515402)

He finds her in an empty park in Prague at two AM, and she smiles.

”Hi,” he says.

”Hi back.” Her smile grows impossibly wider. “It took longer than I thought, this time. I found Erwin years ago.”

“Really? I’ve been looking for him too.”

“Mostly me though, right?” She grins and he rolls his eyes. “Of course, stupid.”

She kisses his cheek and he kisses her forehead in a tradition with more years behind it than could possibly be counted. It feels like coming home.

-

_“Don’t leave me, Hanji, please don’t go,” and his voice breaks but he doesn’t care and Armin is crying behind him and she’s bleeding out, she’s bleeding out right there in his arms and there’s nothing he can do. “Don’t go, not yet, I can’t do this without you,” he’s panicking and he thought he locked words and emotions like that away years and years ago, but there he is and there she’s not anymore and it’s too much, it’s all way too much._

-

The first time they run into each other it’s with a pang of shock and they both stare, incredulous, before she blurts out, “Do I know you?” and he nods, slowly. She’s a doctor and he’s a bloody janitor and he doesn’t remember what year it was, anyway. It’s not important.

Sometimes he finds others first. Once he grew up next door to Petra and Aurou, which was an experience on its own. Sometimes they remember, sometimes they don’t.

(Once, he ran into Eren for the first time in a supermarket and the boy dropped the Corn Flakes he’d been holding and did the full on salute, fist to his heart and everything. Levi still hadn’t decided if it was endearing or just plain ridiculous.)

Sometimes he has a nice family and a sister with red pigtails, sometimes he’s all by himself. But she’s always there, and she always remembers. They meet in college, at weddings and in hospitals and battlefields and parking lots and she’s always there to greet him with a warm smile and, “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

-

_“Captain!” Eren yells, voice too full of pain to belong to a 15-year old, and he winces. The wounds are too deep, he knows, and he’s not scared._

_He turns to the squad. “I’ve got fifteen minutes before I bleed out which is ten more than I need for these assholes,” he says, gesturing towards the titans below them. “Get to the wall as fast as you can. Don’t look back.”_

_There’s tears in Eren’s eyes and even Mikasa looks a little shaken, so he ruffles their hair and sighs. “You’re a shit ton more capable than you think you are and a lot more than I’ve given you credit for. Go finish this. Live.”_

_He doesn’t, but it’s alright._

-

“How do you think it works?” she asks him one day, feet propped up on his lap, and he asks her what she means even though he already knows. “It’s like we’re going in circles. There’s not even a pattern to the time periods, it just spins and spins into eternity.”

“Nothing’s eternal,” he tells her because he’s a cynic like that and she ponders his words for a minute.

“Maybe there’s something we haven’t finished, something we were supposed to do. Like a quest.” Her voice perks up at the last part and he sighs.

“Or, you’ve been watching too much Star Trek.” She just shrugs and turns the page in her book. They leave it at that.

(It’s 1973 and they’re both broke, but they found the TV for cheap at a thrift store and it works well enough. Hanji loves this life. He liked the twenties better.)

-

They’ve been through a few wars together through the years. It’s to be expected. As soon as it’s announced, they both silently put down whatever they’re doing and recruit. No one questions it; it just feels like the most natural progression of events.

Every time, Erwin makes sure they’re promoted and under his direct command, despite the inane protests about women in war and “did that shorty really pass the physical?”. They’re not always on the winning side, but they mostly make it out alive.

Erwin retains his ability to motivate and lead with words alone, Hanji makes discovery upon discovery about poisons and explosives and roaring engines and together, they strategize countries to the ground. Levi handles rifles and swords and fighter planes with alarming accuracy and earns badge upon badge on his chest, right over his heart.

The Special Ops greet him with warm smiles every time and Petra’s tea is always as good as he remembers it. When they inevitably go down, by arrows or heavy fog or malfunctioning navigation equipment he curses and swears that next time, they’ll make it.

Hanji rests her head against his neck and whispers that maybe, it’s just fate.

-

Sometimes the nightmares are too much for him to handle and sometimes Hanji is already far gone into the psychotic rage he remembers all too well from their first expeditions together. Sometimes there’s therapy and pills at hand, sometimes there’s not. They work it out.

-

(“But what if we don’t find each other? What if one of us disappears and we’ll just be left here, searching forever?”

“I think we’ve done our time in hell, four-eyes. Think of eternity as a gift, or some shit. Plus, we still haven’t found Mike or Nanaba, right?”

“No, I think I saw them that time in Bangkok, remember? They looked happy.”)

-

_“Do you believe in reincarnation?” she asks him and he looks up from the boot he’s been polishing. “What’s that?” he asks, the minimal amount of interest in his voice exactly meeting the quota of interest needed to keep her going._

_They’re both recruits, overly ambitious teenagers with too much blood on their hands already._

_“It’s a theory of sorts,” she says dog-earing the book in her lap. “Basically, the idea is that we’re just souls in a body and when we die, or souls keep going into another body, another life.”_

_“Sounds stupid,” Levi tells her. “If you’re dead, you’re dead.”_

_She shrugs. “I guess. I like the idea though.”_

_“Why, do you want to come back and bother me in more lifetimes than this one?” he asks, rubbing at the stain near the ankle that just won’t come out._

_“I wouldn’t mind,” Hanji tells him. “Would you?”_

_He gives up on the stain and puts the boot down between his bare feet. “Not really, I guess.”_

**Author's Note:**

> the messiest reincarnation fic imaginable. "do you remem8er me" does things to a person. i'm so sorry.
> 
> title is of course from "to a stranger" by walt whitman


End file.
